


Bad Night

by stuffbyshelbyfics



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 09:19:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14638809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffbyshelbyfics/pseuds/stuffbyshelbyfics
Summary: Young Stan and Ford have a bad night, but their merfolk friends make it better.





	Bad Night

The dark, cool waters of New Jersey lapped against the outer circle of the atoll, and the inner pool where the baby mers slept was calm and lukewarm. Little clusters of bubbles occasionally rose and popped on the surface, remnants of small, soft snores. Some adult mers lounged in the pool with their children, while others were combing the dark sea beds beyond, hunting for fish and crabs. Nikolai was preparing to join them, clambering over the rocks and slipping into the dark waves, when a stray but familiar scent caught his attention. He couldn’t identify it immediately, but it reeked of dread and distress - and of humans.

He surfaced and neared the atoll again, climbing a little ways up so that he could see the inner pool. “Domingo,” he whispered, “Domingo!”

A rotund, dusky merman raised his head, rubbing gunk out of his eyes, and met Nikolai’s gaze. “What is it?” he whispered back, not wanting to rouse the baby mers. 

“Come out here for a minute, I can smell something.”

The two mermen dove about a dozen feet below, inhaling water in deep, slow breaths. They surfaced much more quickly than they’d gone below.

“It’s Stanford,” Domingo said urgently, “he’s trying to swim here!”

The two of them dove again and sped underwater in the direction of the human scent, Nikolai slightly in the lead. They soon came upon Cyril on his rounds of the seabed, and he recognized the panic in their faces and raced away with them. Eventually they came upon the familiar silhouette of their small friend from twenty feet below, and rose up to meet him.

The three of them immediately realized that Stanford was in serious distress. He was sniffling and shivering in the cold water, and began crying inconsolably when he saw the mermen, from relief or fear they couldn’t tell. Domingo, bringing up the rear, scooped up the small boy and attempted to comfort him.

“What happened, baby? What’s wrong? Is your brother with you?”

Stanford choked and sobbed, limp and exhausted in Domingo’s plump arms. “I - I don’t know, I don’t know,” he wailed, “I couldn’t find him, I lost him!”

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Cyril murmured softly, leaning close to the child and brushing his wet hair aside with his hand, “Let’s get you back to the atoll, okay? And then you can tell us what happened.”

Stanford nodded weakly, and the four of them began the swim back to the cluster of rocks near the distant horizon.

Back at their home, the mermen set about making Stanford comfortable, and Nikolai dove again to collect Monty from his nocturnal hunts. Cyril and Domingo gathered Stanford into their arms, and Cyril began to gently question the child, making use of his ample selection of siren powers to make sure he stayed calm. Slowly and hesitantly, and then more confidently as Monty emerged from the waters, the truth began to take shape.

Stanley and Stanford had returned home early that evening, exchanging regretful goodbyes with the merfolk in order to get an early start on their spring break homework. They were met with a chilly reception from their father Filbrick upon their arrival, but thought no more about it and dutifully withdrew upstairs to start their work with a fair share of comic book breaks. Dinner was tense, and afterwards their father confronted the two of them about how much time they spent away from home every day instead of helping at the pawn shop. Then the topic strayed to Stan’s grades. A crack was made about getting help at home. Voices were raised, with Ma Pines quietly begging her husband and son to lower their voices, lest their neighbors hear. Ford came to his brother’s defence, inciting Filbrick’s ire. The argument grew heated, their mother’s attempts to calm the three failing in the face of the fire being spat. And then the nightmare began, because before anyone had time to scream Filbrick wound back (Monty inhaled sharply and Domingo tensed) and slapped Stanley across the face hard enough to bowl him over and over on the floor, and pushed Stanford down onto the doormat, and Stan scrambled upright and scrabbled at the doorknob and ran out into the night. Ford tried to follow him but the street outside was black and unfamiliar and he knew he couldn’t go back, so he left the rectangle of harsh light and screaming behind him and ran the way his brother had gone. The streets were hostile and empty in the dark, and he ran weeping with fear of what might be behind him in the direction of the beach and his last semblance of safety, but he didn’t want to take the raft in case that would leave Stan with no way out, so he waded through the dark and heavy waves and began to swim…

Stanford’s small voice faltered and stopped. Monty’s arms and membrane had turned a dark reddish brown and thick with raised thorns, a sign of his agitation. He crawled closer from the outer ridge of the atoll and lifted him out of Domingo’s arms and into his own.

“Go find Stanley, you two,” he said softly to Cyril and Nikolai, “We’ll stay here with Stanford.”

As the two mermen slid off the rocks and swam away, Monty beckoned Domingo closer and looped his front arms around his ample waist, sandwiching the boy between the two of them. They stayed like that for a long time, stroking Ford’s hair and wordlessly wiping the tears from his cheeks.

As the night drew on and darkened, suddenly Ford squirmed and struggled to escape Monty’s arms.

“Let me go,” he croaked, “Let me go!”

Monty gently set him down on the sloped rocks surrounding the inner pool, and he curled around himself, six-fingered hands gripping the back of his head. Sobs escaped his throat in huge coughs, and his small body trembled and shook as grief had its way with him. Slowly, Monty’s hand made its way to his back and began to rub. He bent down to whisper in the boy’s ear:

“It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. Cyril and Nikolai will find your brother and you two can stay here for the night, okay? We’ll keep you two safe and sound, I promise.”

 

Stanford had no idea of how much time had passed. He’d returned to the soft, cool blanket that Monty’s arms provided, and the sky was the color of deep, dark steel. Soon a group of spots appeared on the horizon, and drew nearer to reveal Cyril and Nikolai, with Stanley in their arms. They’d found the boy crouching in a dark, damp alleyway underneath the wreckage of some crates, and Cyril has called him back to the water with a soft, cooing song. Even in the dark, a red mark was visible on his cheek where Filbrick’s heavy palm had landed.

The two boys cried and hugged each other, and the other merfolk held them too. Even Muriel, having smelled the distress from down below the water on her hunt, surfaced and put her arm and stump around them all. Eventually sleeping quarters were discussed, and Monty suggested that the two of them sleep in his den for the night. After he stated that idea, he seemed to remember that Stan and Ford’s lungs couldn’t function underwater, and rushed off to retrieve a mixture that he’d been working on (and testing on seagulls) that could allow mammals to breathe underwater and protected them from water pressure. The boys downed their bottles and the three of them disappeared into the deep black water.

 

Down in Monty’s lair, there was, surprisingly, an air pocket below a long vertical tunnel connecting the den to the air far above. As Monty had set the limp Stanley down on the ledge below the tunnel, he’d explained that it had taken a year and a half to complete, with him rigging up wooden platforms (collected from sunken ships) to dig from below while the other mers excavated the tunnel from the rocks above, both groups meeting in the middle upon its completion. On the shelf itself, small oblong pits had been dug that were currently empty but had recently been filled with the liquids Monty used for his potions. One was still filled with the brew he had used to allow the boys to remain protected from drowning and the crushing water pressure. 

Stanley was lying in front of the pits, fast asleep. He’d been too exhausted to do anything else, so Monty had done his best to soothe the slap mark with a gentle stream of cool water from his siphon and tiny kisses from the small suckers at the end of his arms, and hugged him goodnight. He and Stanford lay underwater on the sandy floor of his den, the boy sitting on his chest and his stretchy, baggy arms looped weightlessly around his waist and shoulders. It was so calm and comfortable that Ford could almost forget the terror of the past few hours.

Monty’s long, wavy grey hair flowed around his head like a forest of long seagrass as he ran a finger down Ford’s round nose. “Your nose is very cute,” he said.

Ford felt his cheeks heat up. “Thank you,” he breathed, puffs of air billowing to the surface as he spoke.

“I love your hands, too.” Monty gently clasped the boy’s fingers and rubbed his lips over each tiny knuckle. “Everything about you is wonderful.”

Even though he was underwater, Ford’s eyes stung with dissolved tears. “Why do you say stuff like that? You don’t have to keep being nice to me,” he replied shakily, his words bubbling and distorting slightly in the water.

Monty looked puzzled. “It’s the truth. Everyone at the atoll loves you and your brother. The only reason I haven’t told you before is because I thought you knew.”

Ford gave a watery smile. “C’mon, Monty, don’t make me start crying again.”

The merman smiled. “Alright.”

They lay in silence for a while, Ford adjusting his position so that he was laying on his stomach, his head propped up on his elbows. Monty looped yet more of his now white and calm arms around his small friend, coiling around his shoulders, his waist, his legs, almost gelatinous in their softness. The end of one arm tucked itself neatly under the back of the boy’s shirt, sucking gently on his skin. Ford wondered if this was what it felt like to be in love.

Like all merfolk, Monty had eyes you could get lost in. As Stanford continued to gaze into his warm brown eyes, he felt as if he was passing through two deep tunnels into a little private universe of love and warmth that he never wanted to leave. The two of them inhaled and exhaled the still salt water, and basked in each other’s presence. At last, after the horrors of the night, Ford felt as if everything would eventually be alright for both him and his brother.

 

It was mid morning, and Stan and Ford had left. Domingo and Cyril had taken them back to their beach, and tearfully told them to stay safe and that they loved them. The boys had reassured them that Filbrick would probably pretend that the events of the previous night had not happened, as it was what he usually did when incidents like this occurred. Monty hadn’t accompanied them to the beach, but had hugged both of them hard enough to leave circular red hickeys from his suckers on their skins.

Now Monty was hunched in his lair, his eight arms curled around himself and squeezed into a ball. The papillae on his skin raised and lowered, and colors shifted and flashed across his body as he lay deep in thought. Finally he flowed from his corner to the ledge where the pits lay, and began to fill one with his siphon. He carefully picked up a couple of scales he’d gotten from Muriel and Cyril, with their permission, and rubbed them together with his fingers, lost in thought as the gurgling of the water in the small pit filled the chamber. When it was filled to his satisfaction he crawled over the shelf to a row of bottles and amphorae, aged and eroded by years of seawater and pressure and the liquids held inside. He picked up a few of the old bottles and poured careful streams of glistening, viscous oil, and added the sticky scales.

Monty’s face tensed in concentration as the thick oils mixed and blended with the water. He’d been thinking very thoroughly about the big colorful textbooks Stanford had brought on previous visits, especially about the chapters on genetics. At times like this he almost wished he’d studied humans more, for their written language fascinated him. Books! Huge volumes of years and years of collected research, records of thought and emotion unique to each perpetrator but with the ability to unify thousands! And he loved the textbooks most of all, because the knowledge contained inside had the potential to form a bridge between worlds. Stanford had read to him about cells that supported life at the lowest level, about tiny organisms with primitive eyespots and gullets ingrained with the instinct to pass on their precious genetic seeds. At Monty’s insistence he’d read about DNA and chromosomes and Gregor Mendel, about the rules of heredity and the myriad of abilities and ailments granted by non-Mendelian genetics.

Merfolk already had a limited knowledge of what the humans called genetics - different types of mers produced different kinds of babies, and so on. But the things the humans were able to do and study tantalized Monty. He’d recognized that the experiments and potions he brewed were conducted in the same vein - he used tiny slivers of fins from different types of merfolk or different species of fish and mixed them together and observed what the results of dunking a seagull in the solution would produce.

He was planning something much more ambitious now. As the potion swirled in its rocky pit, he imagined Stan or Ford lying inside, breathing fine and letting the liquid flow inside him and changing who he was. Lungs becoming a set of gills, legs becoming a glittering tail. He’d ask one of them once the potion was close enough to finished, and if they both agreed to take it they could live at the atoll - and maybe the rest of the open ocean, once they were older - where no human could ever hurt them again.


End file.
